Enabling the rights, legal entitlements and safety of all, regardless of history

Thursday, 28 August 2014

Violated The Law Governing Sexual Expression In A Given Culture

August 28, 2014

The Role of Psychiatry in Sex Offender Management

"Medicine and law have a rich collaborative history in the management of persons convicted of sex offenses. Despite different assumptions about the offender and different perspectives about management and goals that may only partly overlap, each discipline offers significant expertise that promotes healing and risk management strategies while increasing community safety.

The term “sex offender” is a legal, not a psychiatric, designation. Sex offenders make up a psychiatrically heterogeneous group of individuals whose only unifying characteristic is that they have violated the law governing sexual expression in a given culture. The law may not greatly concern itself with the biopsychosocial antecedents of illegal sexual behavior, although it recognizes that questions of intent and incompetence or diminished capacity are important considerations."

"It used to be that Americans convicted of pedophilia would get sentenced from one day to life in prison, and it was then up to the prison warden to decide whether and when they were safe enough to be released, Howard Zonana, M.D., explained in an interview. Zonana, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, is a past chair of APA's Task Force on Sexual Offenders.

But today, Zonana continued, there is fixed prison sentencing for convicted pedophiles, and once pedophiles have served their sentences, they have to be released. Moreover, once they are released, they do not have to receive any treatment for their pedophilia unless they have a period of probation.“ So you can see why there is public concern,” he said."